I waited until the match burned down before I spoke. “What do I fight for now?” I asked impassively. There was no use in asking for who. I already knew that.
“Glory, kid,” Skopas replied, “glory. We decided you’re goin’ into the Gloves to build yerself a rep.”
“Great!” I said. “And what do I do for dough? At least I get ten bucks for the watch.”
Skopas’s smile was as cold as his eyes. He blew a cloud of smoke toward me. “We ain’t pikers, kid. Yuh get a hunnert a month until yer old enough to turn pro, then we split outta yer earnin’s.”
“I knock down more’n ten watches a month on this beat,” I retorted heatedly. I felt Giuseppe’s hand restrainingly on my arm. Angrily I shook it off. This wasn’t what I was looking for. “What if I don’t buy this deal?” I asked.
“Then yuh get nothin’,” Skopas said flatly. “But you look like a bright kid. You know better’n to buck the boys. We even got a guy down here who’s goin’ to manage yuh when yuh move over to the pros.”
I sneered. “You’re too sure of yourselves. What makes you guys think I want to be a fighter, anyway?”
Skopas’s eyes were wise. “You need the dough, kid,” he said surely. “That’s why you’ll be a fighter. That’s why you took up the goldwatch beat.”
He was right about that. I did need the dough. Papa was still out of work and this was the only buck I could be sure of outside of knocking somebody over the head. And my experience with Mr. Gold had taught me that I didn’t have the stomach for that business. But now I’d had enough of this. It was okay to pick up a few bucks here and there, but I didn’t buy it for a living. I’d seen too many guys walking around with their punches showing. That wasn’t for me.
I turned to Zep. “Come on, let’s go,” I said succinctly. I looked back at the desk. “So long, Mr. Skopas. Thanks for nothing. It’s been nice knowing you.”
I flung the door open and stalked out. A man standing in the doorway put out a hand to stop me. I pushed his hand away without looking up and started to step around him. A familiar voice beat at my ears:
“Hey, Danny Fisher, ain’t yuh gonna stop an’ say hello to your new manager?”
I looked up suddenly, a grin leaping to my face. My hand flew out, grabbing the man’s arm. “Sam!” I ejaculated. “Sam Gottkin! I should’ve known!”
Skopas’s voice came from over my shoulder. It had a slightly apologetic note in it. “The kid ain’t buyin’, Mr. Gottkin.”
Sam’s eyes were looking questioningly at me. I made up my mind quickly. I turned to Skopas, a smile on my face. “If it’s okay with you, Mr. Skopas,” I said, “you can tell your friends uptown they got themselves a new boy!”
“C’mon, Danny,” Sam said a few minutes later. “I’ll get you somethin’ to eat.”
I grinned at him. “Sure, Sam,” I said. “Just a minute.” I walked over to Skopas’s desk and looked down at him. The tension had gone from the room; even Skopas was smiling. The other men were watching me carefully. They knew if I had been tapped by boys uptown I was a real comer.
“Mr. Skopas,” I said with a smile, “I’m sorry I blew up. Thanks for what you did.”
He smiled up at me. “It’s okay, kid.”
I held out my hand. “But don’t forget my watch.”
He laughed loudly and turned to the men in the room. “The kid’s okay,” he announced. “He’ll go far. If I had five grand I would have gone for him myself.”
The surprise showed on my face, for the men laughed aloud. I looked at Sam and he nodded his head. I turned back to Skopas, wondering. Sam must be doing all right if he could afford to shell out five grand for me.
Skopas fished two bills from his pocket and placed them in my hand. “I ain’t got any watches on me, kid, so this time we’ll cut out the middleman.”
I put the money in my pocket. “Okay, Mr. Skopas,” I said. I walked back to Sam with a new respect. “Let’s go.”
I looked down at my plate regretfully. One thing about Gluckstern’s special Rumanian broilings. If you could eat all of it you were a hero. I put down my fork. “I’m bustin’,” I admitted. I turned to Giuseppe. “How you doin’?”
Giuseppe grinned with a mouthful of steak. “Okay, Danny.”
I looked across the table at Sam. He had quit too. He was watching me, a curious look on his face. “I see you couldn’t make it either,” I said.
“Too much,” he said. “I gotta watch my weight now.”
He was right about that. He had put on a little weight since I saw him last. “How come yuh never answered the letter I sent yuh last year?” he asked suddenly.
I looked at him in surprise. “I never got it,” I said simply.
“I was lookin’ for yuh,” he said. “I even went out to your old house to see yuh, but nobody had your address.” He lit a cigarette. “I had a job for yuh.”
“Last summer?” I asked.
He nodded.
I fished a cigarette out of the pack Sam had left on the table. “I could’a used one too,” I said. “Things were pretty rough.”
“Did yuh graduate school yet?”
I shook my head. “This June,” I replied. I looked at Sam curiously. “How’d you happen to find me?” I asked. “Last I heard you had gone to Florida.”
“I did go,” Sam answered. “Did good too. But I didn’t forget about you. I always said some day I’d make a champ outta you, so I put out the word to some friends to keep an eye peeled for yuh. I figured sooner or later you’d turn up. A guy who fights as good as you don’t stay out altogether.” He reached across the table and plucked the cigarette from my mouth with a smile. “You ain’t usin’ these any more if you’re workin’ for me.”
“I like working for you,” I said, watching him squash out the butt. “But I don’t know if I like the idea of being a fighter.”
“Then what were you doin’ in those penny-ante clubs fightin’ for watches?” he asked pointedly.
I nodded toward Giuseppe. “I needed the dough and he knew where I could pick up maybe three, four watches a week for three-round amateurs. It looked like easy dough, so I did it. But I never meant to turn pro—it was only till I got out of school.”
“Then what were you gonna do?” Sam asked. “Set the world on fire? Get a job for ten bucks a week? If you’re lucky, that is?”
I flushed. “I didn’t think about that,” I admitted.
Sam smiled. “I thought so,” he said confidently. “But from now on, I’m gonna do your thinkin’.”
Chapter Eight
I LOOKED at my face in the mirror. Outside of the small bruise high on my cheekbone I didn’t show any signs of the fight last night. I grinned at my reflection. I was lucky.
I finished combing my hair and left the bathroom. As I approached the kitchen, I could hear Papa’s voice. I went into the room smiling. “Good morning,” I said.
Papa’s voice stopped in the middle of what he had been saying, his face turned toward me. He didn’t answer.
“Sit down, Danny,” Mamma said quickly, “and eat your breakfast.”
I slipped easily into a chair. Papa had been watching me. Each day had brought more Lines to his face, lines of worry and hopelessness. His eyes seemed veiled with a curtain of despair that vanished only in the heat of his temper and anger. It seemed to me that Papa’s temper was displayed more and more frequently as time went on, as if he found some sort of relief from his worries in giving way to it.
I put my hand in my pocket, took out a ten-dollar bill, and tossed it on the table. “I made a few bucks last night,” I said casually.
Papa looked at the money, then up at me. His eyes began to glitter. I knew the look: it was a sign he was working up his temper. I bent my head over my plate and began to shovel the oatmeal into my mouth rapidly. I wanted to avoid the scene I knew would follow.
For a moment Papa was quiet, then his voice, strangely husky, rasped at my ears: “Where’d you get it? Fighting?”
&nb
sp; I nodded without looking up from the plate. I continued to spoon the cereal quickly into my mouth.
“Danny, you didn’t?” Mamma’s voice was anxious, and her face had set in worried lines.
“I had to, Ma,” I said quickly. “We need the dough. Where else we gonna get it?”
Mamma looked at my father. There was a faint white pallor showing beneath his skin. It gave him a sick, unhealthy look. She turned back to me. “But we told you we didn’t want you to do it,” she protested weakly. “You might get hurt. We’d manage to get along somehow.”
My eyes were on her face. “How?” I asked matter-of-factly. “There are no jobs anywhere. We’d have to go on relief.”
Mamma’s face was set. “That might be better than you taking chances of getting yourself killed.”
“But, Ma,” I said, “I’m not taking any chances. I’ve gone through thirty of these things already and the worst that happened was that I got a scratch over my eye that healed in a day. I’m careful and the dough is handy.”
She turned hopelessly to Papa. There was no use arguing with me. I had all the logic on my side.
Papa’s face was completely white now, his fingers trembled against the coffee cup in his hand. He was staring at me, but he didn’t talk directly to me, he spoke to Mamma. “It’s his girl,” he said in a flat, nasty voice. “She gets him to do it. She doesn’t care if he gets himself killed as long as he has a buck to take her out and give her a good time.”
“It is not!” I flared hotly. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had known this was coming from the moment I saw him this morning. “She doesn’t want it any more than you do! I’m doin’ it because it’s the only way to make a tuck that I know!”
Papa ignored me. His bright, feverish eyes were the only thing in his face that seemed alive. His voice was freezing with contempt. “A shiksocha whore!” he continued, his eyes fixed on me. “How much do you have to give her for the nights you spend with her in hallways and on street corners? A Jewish girl is not good enough for you? No, a Jewish girl won’t do the things she does. A Jewish girl won’t let a boy fight to get money for her, let a son become a stranger to his own parents. How much do you pay her, Danny, for the things she gives to her own kind for nothing?”
I felt a chill hatred replace the heat of anger in me. I rose slowly to my feet and looked down at him. My voice was shaking. “Don’t talk like that, Papa. Don’t ever say things like that about her again. Not where I can hear them.”
I could see Nellie’s white frightened face dancing on front of my eyes, the way she had looked when I first told her I was going to pick up some dough fighting. “She’s a good girl,” I went on, barely able to speak, “as good as any of our own and better than most. Don’t let out on her your own failures. It’s your fault we are where we are, not hers.”
I leaned over the table glaring into his eyes. For a moment he stared back at me, then his gaze dropped and he raised the coffee cup to his lips.
Mamma put her hand on my arm. “Sit down and finish your breakfast. It’s getting cold.”
Slowly I dropped back into my chair. I wasn’t hungry any more. I was tired and my eyes burned. Chill and drained of feeling, I reached for my coffee and drank it quickly, its hotness running through me, warming my body.
Mamma sat down next to me. For a while there was a smouldering tense silence in the kitchen. Her voice cracked into it. “Don’t be angry with your father, Danny,” she said softly. “He only talks for your own good. He’s worried about you.”
There was a curious hurt in me as I looked at her. “But she’s a good girl, Mamma,” I said, bitterness in my voice. “He shouldn’t talk like that.”
“But, Danny, she’s not a Jewish girl.” Mamma was trying to show understanding.
I didn’t answer. What good would it do? They would never understand.
“Maybe Papa will get a job and you can stop this fighting,” Mamma added hopefully.
Suddenly I felt old, very old. Those words were lollipops for children. I had heard them before. They might as well know it now. “It’s too late, Mamma,” I said wearily. “I can’t stop.”
“What—what do you mean?” Her voice was trembling.
I got to my feet. “I’m through fighting in the dumps. The boys uptown think I’m good. I made a deal with them.” I stared at my father. “I’m going into the Gloves. They’re gonna give me a hundred a month, and when I’m old enough I turn pro.”
Mamma looked at me with a stricken face. “But—”
I felt sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do about it; we had to eat. “No buts, Mamma,” I interrupted her. “I made the deal and it’s too late to back out now. A hundred a month is as much as Papa would get on a job. We can live on that.”
The tears sprang into her eyes and she turned helplessly to Papa. “Harry, what are we going to do now?” she cried. “He’s only a baby. What if he gets hurt?’
Papa was staring at me, a muscle in his cheek twitching. He drew a deep breath. “Let him,” he answered without taking his eyes from my face. “I hope he does get hurt; it would serve him right!”
“Harry!” Mamma was shocked. “He’s our son!”
His eyes narrowed slightly, still burning into mine. “More like the son of the devil, he is,” he said in a low, bitter voice, “than a son of ours.”
Chapter Nine
I CAME out of the dark hallway, my eyes blinking at the bright sunlight, and stood for a moment letting the warm spring air roll over me. I felt good. Four months had passed since I had thrown in with Sam. Good months, too. I’d come through the Gloves eliminations and now had only one more fight to go and I would be ready for the finals in the Garden—if I won. But I had no doubts about winning.
I filled my lungs with the fresh air. My collar cut into my neck and I opened it. My collars were always too tight now. It was the training that did it.
If Papa would only realize that it was just another way to make a living, everything would be perfect. But he didn’t, he kept harping on me, blaming the whole thing on Nellie and saying only bums were fighters. Now we hardly spoke to each other any more. He wouldn’t give an inch. He was too stubborn, like just now when I left the house.
Papa had been reading a paper spread across the kitchen table as I walked through the room. He didn’t look up.
“I’ll be a little late tonight, Ma,” I had said.
She had asked anxiously: “Another fight?”
I nodded. “The semi-final, Ma. Out at the Grove in Brooklyn.” My voice was proud. “And after this the finals at the Garden and then no more till next year.”
“You’ll be careful, Danny?” she asked doubtfully.
I had smiled confidently. “Don’t worry, Ma. I’ll be all right.”
Papa had raised his head from the newspaper at my words and spoken to Mamma as if I weren’t in the room at all. “Don’t worry, Mary, he’ll be all right. Listen to what the paper has to say about him.” He began to read from the paper in a low sarcastic voice:
“Danny Fisher, the sensational East Side flash with dynamite in each fist, is expected to take another step toward the championship in his division when he meets Joey Passo in the Gloves semi-finals at the Grove tonight. Fisher, called by many ‘the Stanton Street Spoiler,’ because of his record of fourteen straight kayos, is being closely watched by the whole fighting world. There is a strong rumour that he is set to turn pro as soon as he is of age.
“A slim quiet-speaking, blond boy, Fisher, in the ring, turns into a cold, merciless killer, going to work on his opponent without feeling or compassion, like a machine. This writer believes without a doubt that Fisher is the most ruthlessly promising amateur he has ever seen. If you fight fans will show up at the Grove tonight, we can safely promise you won’t be disappointed. You will see blood, gore, and sudden death, for when Fisher goes to work with either hand, friend, its nothing short of ‘murder’!”
Papa let the paper rattle back to the table in fr
ont of him and looked up at Mamma. “Good words to read about your own son—‘killer, murder, sudden death.’ Words to make a man proud of his child.”
Mamma looked at me hesitantly. I could see she was upset. “Danny, is it true what the man said?”
I tried to reassure her. I felt embarrassed. “Naw, Ma. You know how it is. After all, his paper sponsors the Gloves an’ they try to build it up so’s to sell more tickets.”
She wasn’t convinced. “You’ll be careful anyway, Danny,” she insisted.
Papa laughed shortly. “Don’t worry, Mary,” he said sarcastically. “Nothing will happen to him. He won’t get hurt. The devil looks after his own.” He turned to me. “Go on, Killer,” he taunted. “For a dollar you can murder all your friends.”
Those were his first direct words to me in weeks. I had taken enough side insults from him and kept my mouth shut; now I was through taking them. “I’ll kill ’em for the dollar, Pop,” I said, “so you can sit here on your backside an’ live off it!”
I had slammed out of the house and down the stairs, but now in the sunlight and warm air I began to feel better.
As I turned the corner, a voice called to me. Spit was standing in a doorway, waving. “Hey, Danny, c’mere a minute.”
“I can’t, Spit. I’m late,” I called back, hurrying on.
Spit came running after me and grabbed at my arm excitedly. “Danny, my boss wants to meet ’cha.”
I looked at him. “Who, Fields?”
“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Fields.” Spit’s head bobbed up and down. “I tol’ him I knew yuh an’ he says get him.”
A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) Page 16